The Web of Life : A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems

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Summary: scientific justification for web surfing adicts
Review: Frijtof Capra has made a literary career out of bridging previously polarized points of view. The Web of Life raises the concepts in The Tao of Physics to another quantum level. Profound not only in its understanding of 20th century science and the paradigm shift implied by systems theory, this book has social, political and even spiritual ramifications that challenge many of our most comfortable presumptions about "the real world." Offering the architecture of the web as a replacement for linear thinking, the book leads us through important examples to the revolutionary conclusions

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Summary: It is obne of the best ones
Review: I need to find this book of Capra in spanish. Would you please help me? Thanks,

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Summary: Useful introduction to systems thinking
Review: I was delighted by the initial sections of the book - the first time I have seen 'systems thinking' properly defined, and also a very useful sketch of the historical development of these ideas. I will therefore be recommending it to my students - it really is a useful book. But do I agree with it? I think the whole thesis falls down in the application to ecosystems; here the evidence gets really shaky and I wasn't convinced.

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Summary: A Flawed Masterpiece
Review: If you can put up with the author's ego and the many small errors in his examples (Most of his examples in economics are incorrect), this book is one of the best overviews of modern systems thinking that you can read. Highly recommended

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Summary: A Disorganized Jumble Of Disconnected Thoughts.
Review: Please, please, do yourself a favor and don't buy this book. I was so excited to read it, then after 50 pages, I was so excited to throw it away. I just threw it in the trash.
The book is just a bunch of disconnected thoughts with no organization, no style, no interesting revelations, no coherent,readable paragraphs. The fact that this book's editor let it get published means the editor needs to be replaced. - You want to read a good book you can't put down, read 'Complexity'.

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Summary: Good Intro to a Dying Movement
Review: While I found this book very readable and a good survey of ideas from so called systems theory, I often wondered to what extent it was a subjectively revised version of what could be more objectively portrayed. What I found most telling in this regard was the fact that although he admits that systems thinking has died as an academic movement, he fails to mention the significant community of scientists (many of them Nobel prize winners) that have gathered at the Sante Fe Institute to study complex adaptive systems. Capra even very selectively mentions Kauffman's work without acknowledging the thriving academic community he is involved in (except in one sentence as a kind of afterthought). His intuitive synthesis is interesting but like most systems thinking an appealing guess that never seems to amount to much without the science to back it up.